Dog owners tend to calculate their mutt's age in terms of "dog years" by multiplying the dog's age by some factor (5/6/7?), e.g. a 6-year old is ~40 in dog years, i.e. which in human terms is middle-aged.
This could be extrapolated into a product - a watch? - which not only works in dog years, but also dog months, weeks, days, hours etc. This could be given to the pet as a birthday present for it to use, or be worn by the owner, so he/she can relate more closely to their animal.
A fancy multi-fauna-flora timepiece could be developed to encompass the relative life cycle of all living things. E.g. "what's the time in fruitbat?", or "Sorry I'm late for work, but I had my watch set to giant tortoise time, and so actually I'm five minutes early".-- slancaster, May 17 2001 (?) doug77's link. http://patft.uspto....850&RS=PN/5,023,850Good idea though. [DrBob, Nov 17 2004] (?) Dog wearing watch http://patimg2.uspt...2526RS=PN/5,023,850 [skinflaps, Nov 17 2004] Way cool! Have to go now, it's hyrax lunchtime.-- angel, May 17 2001 This is great! Could teach some empathy for other beings, too--your dog has waited 30 minutes for you to finish a 5-minute conversation, your hamster has been alone for 6 days while you put in 8 hours at work, and your pet fruit fly has raised a family in your fruit bowl over the weekend.-- Dog Ed, May 17 2001 This idea is so great, somebody actually got a patent on it in 1991. Go to www.uspto.gov and search for Patent No. 5,023,850. There's even a patent drawing of a large dog checking the time on its watch.-- doug77, Nov 06 2003 Can anyone else see the images? I really want to see a big dog wearing a watch!-- wagster, Nov 17 2004 There you go [wagster] link.-- skinflaps, Nov 17 2004 Hmmm. Can't see it through that link either - no image loads, despite the fact that I'm now looking at it from a different machine / connections / everything. Had this the last time I looked at the US patent site - maybe the incompatibility issues lie with me. <Goes off to download [wagster] v2.6>-- wagster, Nov 17 2004 Not sure that patent meets 'not obvious' or 'useful function' tests...
And you need to return to the text of the article and click on 'images' since each images session times out.-- Chrontius, Nov 17 2004 random, halfbakery